Sadness Is a White Bird

November 15, 2017

Israeli American teenager Jonathan and his family move back to Israel, where his grandfather was among the founding generation; hearing his grandfather's stories, Jonathan dreams of joining the army. However, through his mother, who is involved in the peace movement, Jonathan learns another side of Israel's history, meeting and befriending Palestinian twins Laith and Nimreen, with whom he develops a close bond. Their carefree Friday afternoon explorations around Haifa--and sometimes well beyond--eventually lead to a relationship with Nimreen. While Jonathan dreams of a future with her, their relationship begins to fracture when he introduces Laith and Nimreen to some of his Israeli friends, and when Nimreen takes him to meet her grandmother on the West Bank. These strains deepen as graduation and his draft date near and reach a breaking point when his unit is assigned to watch over a Palestinian rally at which a demonstrator is killed. VERDICT While offering an unusually political coming-of-age novel, Rothman-Zecher frames the conflict in human terms. Passionate, topical, and thoughtful, this heartbreaking tale is vital reading for anyone who cares about the future of this part of the world. [See Prepub Alert, 8/21/17.]--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2017
A very young Israeli soldier whose best friends are Palestinian twins is driven to the breaking point by conflicting loyalties.Rothman-Zecher's debut begins in the "fluorescent glow of a jail cell" just days after its narrator's 19th birthday. In an epistolary narrative addressed to his friend Laith, Jonathan pours out his heart and sorts through his past. Two years earlier, before his senior year of high school, Jonathan's family returned to Israel after a long stint in Pennsylvania. The family's history--his grandfather left the Greek city of Salonica before the Nazis deported all its Jews to concentration camps; other family members did not--has given Jonathan a profound sense of the importance of the Jewish state. Thus he was eagerly awaiting the beginning of his military service when he met Laith and his sister, Nimreen, tall, brilliant, cool Palestinian twins, students at Haifa University, both with eyes "the color of a sidewalk after a misty summer rain." Charmed and amused by the boy and his really pretty decent command of Arabic, they take him under their wings, and all more or less fall in love with each other. Over a long series of adventures, bus trips, nights on the beach, marijuana-fueled conversations, and poetry readings, Jonathan begins to see the occupation through the eyes of his friends and grasps that their family history is no less tragic than his own. Then his draft date arrives, and before long his unit is sent as a police presence to a demonstration in the Territories. "Today, you're going to put down a riot," their commander says. What happens that day is the reason Jonathan is in jail, the reason for this cri de coeur to his beloved friend Laith.A passionate, poetic coming-of-age story set in a mine field, brilliantly capturing the intensity of feeling on both sides of the conflict.

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December 18, 2017
Rothman-Zecher’s outstanding debut takes its title from a Mahmoud Darwish poem: “Sadness is a white bird that does not come near a battlefield.” On the cusp of adulthood, Jonathan returns with his family from America to Israel, which means that soon he must serve in the Israeli army. Having been told the tragic stories of his Jewish ancestors, this service to his people is something he dreamed of as a boy. But after meeting the daughter and son of his mother’s Palestinian friend, twins named Nimreen and Laith, whom Jonathan dictates his story to, the lens through which he views the world changes. In poetic, epistolary prose, Rothman-Zecher describes Jonathan’s growing love for Nimreen (“the tangled curtain of her blackbird hair”) and for Laith, “voice soft like your sister’s, loamy like the ground,” whose sweet, lazy disposition provokes deep affection and loyalty. Against Nimreen’s wishes, Jonathan joins the paratroopers, with tragic consequences that cause Jonathan to spiral into what may or may not be insanity. Rothman-Zecher has an unusual way with words, giving lovely, fresh descriptions of desire, violence, and injustice.

January 1, 2018
Rothman-Zecher portrays three friends in Israel. Two Palestinian Israeli twins appear to be integrated into Israeli society, but they are still connected, as though by an umbilical cord, to the hurt their people experienced with the birth of Israel. The third friend is the grandson of an Israeli pioneer who fought in the war that created the nation. Raised in the U.S., he feels like an outsider in his own country. The deep, touching friendship he develops with the twins is strained by his looming enlistment in the Israeli Defense Force, where he knows he'll be involved in enforcing the occupation of Palestinian territories. The psychological and physical borders these three friends cross trace the nuanced dance required for Israelis and Palestinians to share one land. Each character wears a mask in fear of what others will think or do if they knew what was truly in each other's hearts. And when they attempt to bridge these barriers, they cause unintended pain. Rothman-Zecher, who refused to serve in the Israeli army, addresses complex, urgent issues through his vital and memorable characters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)